Saturday, May 22, 2010

What’s the Difference Between Starting a Small Business and a Virtual Business?

Another question I get all the time is “What’s the Difference between Starting a Small Business and a Virtual Business?"

The answer is starting a small business requires a large initial investment. For a virtual business all you need is a computer and internet access.

The main reason small businesses requires a large initial investment is because they need items such as desks, furniture, equipment, supplies, phones, credit card processing machines, long term leases, employees, utility deposits, filing cabinets, space for supplies, printing and copying, faxing , paper, toner, storage, payroll taxes, employee benefits and on and on and on.

It is expensive, cumbersome and time consuming to build and maintain a business with a physical setting. Most people who start a brick-and-mortar business need financial backing, either by selling equity to a partner or borrowing funds themselves.

On the other hand, to start a virtual business all you need is a computer and internet access. By creating a virtual business, you can create a professional image. You can operate effectively and efficiently. Most importantly, because the overhead expenses are so low and you do not have the large initial investment; with a virtual business, you will be able to be profitably sooner than your typical brick-and-mortar business.

The benefits of starting, managing and growing a virtual business are endless:

1. You can launch an entire business with little to no money

2. You can convert your brick and mortar into a virtual business and reduce your costs massively. In my case I went from about $25,000 in back office expenses per month, to about $600.

3. You can work from the comfort of your home. I went from working 60-70 hours a week in my physical business, to about 2-hours a day managing my virtual business.

4. You can manage your virtual business remotely. I missed so many field trips! Now, I volunteer at my kid's school

5. You can have employees scattered all over the world. You can find the best of the best and they don't have to live in your town

6. You can digitize and automate. This allows you to build processes and systems at very little cost

7. You can hire virtual assistants and not have to deal with the daily business minutia

By taking your company virtual or starting up a virtual business, you can grow your company as big as you want to. You don’t even need a physical location. In today’s new economy, more and more big corporations are downsizing their workforce to work from home. Having an office in a major corporate park, or a major city is totally and completely irrelevant!

You can see an example of a real sustainable, successful virtual business (100% virtual and paperless) at groupbenefitagency.com

Anyone can start a virtual business in minutes! You don’t need major start up capital. You don’t need investors. You don’t need to risk months or years trying to break even. You don’t even have to gamble your savings.

Visit Virtual Business Dashboard to get the “20 Insider Secrets for Starting Your Own Virtual Business on a Shoestring” and a video of “The Best Business to Start in This New Economy”

Thursday, May 20, 2010

The biggest question I get all the time is “How Do I Know If I Have a Great Product Idea for a Virtual Business?"

The answer is: Do a FREE online market research that can pinpoint if you have a credible, sustainable and profitable product or service idea. The same market research can help you re-position an existing product or service in a different profitable niche market. Once you have identified a profitable niche, start selling it through a virtual business, even if you have a physical office. It is difficult to succeed in today’s market without a web presence.

The beauty of starting a virtual business, if implemented properly, is that you do not have to guess if your product or idea will fly. Thanks to the advance of technology, there are analytical tools out there that will allow you to do extremely sophisticated market research in little time. You can do today, in just a couple of hours, what big corporations used to spend months and thousands of dollars getting the same results that today takes you only a few minutes at zero cost.

The great thing about these tools is that most of them are free or have free trials. This gives you enough time to do proper research and see if your product will be profitable for you. If after you completed the research, you see your product is not a feasible idea, then the same analytical tools can show what other products or services you should start concentrating your efforts on to increase your chances of success.

Additional reasons I prefer a virtual business are:

You don’t need to set up a storefront to succeed

You will save time by streamlining your business systems

You will save money by digitizing all your back office processes

This means you can wok from any place, at any time, at any pace. All you need is a computer and internet access to get you going.

The benefits of starting, managing and growing a virtual business are endless:

You can take advantage of cutting edge technology, readily available for free

You can reap mega profits just like big corporations do.

Your competition will not stand a chance. While they are trying to figure out what happened, you will have already dominated your niche market.

You can see an example of a real sustainable, successful virtual business (100% virtual and paperless) at groupbenefitagency.com

Anyone can start a virtual business in minutes! You don’t need major start up capital. You don’t need investors. You don’t need to risk months or years trying to break even. You don’t even have to gamble your savings.

Visit Virtual Business Dashboard to get the “20 Insider Secrets for Starting Your Own Virtual Business on a Shoestring” and a video of “The Best Business to Start in This New Economy”

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

A question I get all the time is “Why Should I Bother Starting a Virtual Business Instead of the Traditional Small Business?”

The answer is because it’s the new economy. We are connecting everything to everything. If you don’t take your company virtual, and continue the old way of doing business, you will pretty much be putting yourself out of business.

The reason virtual businesses are here to stay is because the internet has impacted the way we do business forever:

You can do business globally almost instantaneously. Nothing, absolutely nothing has leveled the playing field as the internet has.

With a click of a mouse, you can now be competing with the largest corporations on the planet and thrive. If your business is not virtual; you have just taken yourself out of the competition.

You can narrow; service and dominate a niche market at a pace, professionalism and profits unheard of before the raise of the internet.

This means you can be the next Amazon, or Google. After all, both companies were started by a couple of guys working out of their garage, or in Google’s case, out of their basement.

The benefits of starting, managing and growing a virtual business are endless:

You can work from home.

You can have time to spend time with your kids.

Or do what you enjoy most.

You can hire people from any place around the globe.

You can look and act like a big business.

You can thrive in the global markets.

Your overhead expenses will be low

By keeping your expenses low, you can maximize your business profits.

You can literally start a virtual business with little to no money.

As you can see, with a virtual business, all you need is a computer and internet access to get you going.

You can see an example of a real sustainable, successful virtual business at groupbenefitagency.com

Anyone can start a virtual business in minutes! You don’t need major start up capital. You don’t need investors. You don’t need to risk months or years trying to break even. You don’t even have to gamble your savings.

Visit http://virtualbusinessdashboard.com to get the "20 Insider Secrets for Starting Your Own Virtual Business on a Shoestring" and a video of "The Best Business to Start in This New Economy".

Friday, May 14, 2010

A question I get all the time is “How Can I Start My Own Business on a Shoe-String?”

The answer is go virtual The reason I prefer a virtual business is because:

You can get free open source applications that make it easy and inexpensive to start a sophisticated and sustainable business

You can launch fast and aggressive online marketing campaigns at little to no cost

You can be up and running and start selling globally in little to no time

This means you can work from anyplace, at anytime, at any pace. All you need is a computer and internet access to get you going.

The benefits of starting, managing and growing a virtual business are endless. Here are some of the top reasons:

You can work from home, no more babysitters or missed golf games

No more giving up your personal life to run a business. You can schedule your day and your work around what matters most to you.

You can hire people from any place around the globe

You can have virtual employees on a per need basis. No more worrying about payroll, benefits and the endless requirements of running a full-time workforce

Your overhead expenses will be low since most of your business will be digitized

You will maximize your business profits. By lowering your daily expenses, you get to keep more of what you earn

The risk is much lower than a traditional small business. You don’t have to lock yourself into long term leases, furniture, equipment and the endless requirements of a small business start up.

The secret then, to starting a Business on a Shoestring, is to start a virtual business. You don’t need major start up capital. You don’t need investors. You don’t need to risk months or years trying to break even. You don’t even have to gamble your savings.

To be honest, many people go into business and realize that running a business is not for them. With a virtual business, your initial investment is so low, that even after you launched a business, if you realize it is not for you; walking away from it will not break the bank. Compared to a traditional small business venture, you would have lost very little trying out your new venture.

You can see an example of a real sustainable, successful virtual business (100% virtual and paperless) at www.groupbenefitagency.com

Visit the virtual business dashboard to get the "20 Iinsider Secrets for Starting Your Own Virtual Business on a Shoestring" and a video of "The Best Business to Start in This New Economy".

Monday, May 10, 2010

The biggest question I get all the time is “What kind of virtual business should I start in this new economy?”

The answer is go green.

The reason I prefer a green virtual business is because:

You can set up an entire virtual business (also known as eBusiness) at little to no cost.

According to Entrepreneur.com, Green Power is one of the 10 hottest trends to watch for.

Government contracts now have a proposed five percent "Green Contracting Goal", giving you an unfair advantage to position your business to win government contracts fast.

By setting up a sophisticated virtual business at little to no cost, you’ll get a real sustainable business. You can start selling your green products or services right away for thousands of dollars and without the expensive overhead or huge high-risk initial investment capital typical of small business start-ups.

The secret then to starting a "Low Cost, High Profit Green Business" for this new economy...is to start a virtual business. You don’t need start up capital. You don’t need to spend months, if not years chasing bank loans, business angels, government agencies, grants or other funding options.

In this new economy, not only is it hard to access funding, but most sources will want you to have a proven business before they give you any money. Or, as you may well know by now, your friendly banker will want all your personal assets as collateral. Not to mention, the weeks if not months wasted chasing funds you may never get.

Therefore, here are the seven steps you need to take, to start your own green virtual business on a shoe-string:

Set up your virtual back-office processes. Use mainly FREE open source applications. This makes the cost to entry very low.

Market online. Use social media, blogs, forums, articles, and other free marketing channels.

Sell globally. By launching a virtual business, overnight you will have access to clients all over the world.

Install virtual communication channels. Set up virtual phones, faxes, chats, etc. Most of them for free or at very little cost.

Be up and running in days, or even hours and manage your new virtual business remotely.

As you can see, with a virtual business, all you need is a computer and internet access to get you going.

You can see an example of a real sustainable, successful green virtual business (100% virtual and paperless) at www.groupbenefitagency.com

Now, if you’d like to start your own virtual business, whether for a green product or not; I have put together a multimedia training, showing you exactly how to implement and manage a virtual business.

To make it easier for you, I took away all that geek speak and show you step-by-step on how to use and implement these technologies without getting into all of those super crazy esoteric instructions. I pretty much took away the pain of all those things you don’ t need to know and I just narrowed down to the things that are going to get you the quickest results the fastest so you can start making more money in less time.